On September 23rd, we posted that Amazon.com was going to release software allowing PC users to read their Kindle book purchases on a PC.
According to this post on Teleread, the software is now available. In a second post, Teleread’s founder and editor, David Rothman. shares his impressions of the Kindle PC software after a quick “test drive.” Overall, they’re positive saying that software “looks promising” but MobiPocket PC software surpasses Kindle in terms of “flexibility.” He also asks Amazon.com when will the Kindle be able to handle the ePub format?
As a first generation Kindle owner, we’re very happy to see this release. We find the actual Kindle device not the easiest tool to deal with in terms of the way content appears on the screen and also moving from one page to the next. There are more issue we can discuss at at another time.
We use the Kindle for iPhone app most of the time and find pages MUCH easier to read and navigate . Our wish for the Kindle is that back-of-book indexes get hyperlinked. Yes, in most cases the TOC is hyperlinked but not the index and we don’t need to tell the ResourceShelf readership that each has it’s own purpose. We’re not sure who is responsible for hyperlinkng content. If it’s Amazon.com, fix it. If it’s the publisher, fix it.
Right now, usability suffers from not being able to go to a specific place in a book without having been there before and bookmarking the page. Finally, we’re also interested in comparing the Kindle PC experience with other eBook services that are often found in libraries like ebrary, OverDrive, and NetLibrary.
And in case you were wondering, the Amazon PC Software page says that a Mac version is “coming soon.” However, no time frame is provided.
The official news release is here and you can download Kindle PC software here.
UPDATE from TeleRead: David Rothman Reports that You Can Download Kindle eBooks Directly to Your PC from Non-Amazon Sites–app lets you download Kindle e-books directly to your PC from non-Amazon sites—not just the Kindle Store.
Rothman Writes:
The good news, not evident to me when I first tested the software and wrote an earlier version of this review, is that, yes, you can download non-Amazon books through Kindle for PC from sites like Feedbooks. Firefox, Internet Explorer or other popular browsers will give you that format as an option.
“The books are then stored in the My Kindle Content folder in My Documents in unaltered .mobi or .prc format,” says GJN, who has tried the feature, as have I now.
“One can also move .mobi or .prc books to the My Kindle Content folder and they show up in your library. I like it much more now. If it could read .pdf file (haven’t tried that yet) and vary fonts, I’d be happy with it. By the way, it counts as one of the six Kindles you can have registered to your account.”
Source: TeleRead, Amazon.com
See Also: Facts and Figures: A Comprehensive Matrix of eBook Reader Info
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 and is filed under E-books, Information Industry.
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